Three prominent researchers warn about the current existential threat in the United States
Helmut Schwarz has been reading about what happened to science during the rise of Adolf Hitler, almost a century ago.
The German chemist just received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the BBVA Foundation in Spain, due to his contributions to the field of catalysis. For him, there are parallels between the situation in Nazi Germany and Trump’s United States.
“From 1900 to 1932, a third of all Nobel Prizes went to Germany, more than to the U.S. and the U.K. combined,” he tells EL PAÍS. He and two other scientists sat down with EL PAÍS in Bilbao, where they received their awards.
“When Hitler came to power,” he continues, “German science — which led the world — completely disintegrated. But Hitler thought that wouldn’t be a problem,” he continues. Now, Donald Trump’s administration views universities — supposed hotbeds of progressive ideology — as the enemy. He wants to bring them under his control. “In my opinion, the threat isn’t immediate, but it’s very important in the long term,” Schwarz adds.
Lysenkoism
Care to explain for the layperson?
Other comment made some good points but it's a much more direct comparison with the government dictating science rather than science guiding government. Lysenko was a soviet scientist who denied [classical] genetics because he perceived random mutations and natural selection to be "burgeois" and "fascist"; instead he pushed Lamarckism genetics (genetic adaptation and inheritance through struggle) which he thought was more compatible with communist ideology. Because of that ideological agenda he got backing from Stalin.
He went on to design their agricultural system around lots of wrong genetic inheritance ideas. (For example, attempting to mutate crops by exposing them to harsh conditions, or mutating entire plants by grafting two species together.) Soviet scientists pushing back were round up and imprisoned or executed. So not only was their agriculture failing, but they killed off entire generations of biologists which set them back even further.
Other communist countries also took up the idea (including china) and all their agriculture suffered greatly for it. Millions and millions of people died from malnutrition or starvation.
Thank you for clarifying. I'm sorry if I jumped in with my interpretation. I know who Lysenko was. But not much more than that he was a biologist who kept denying science in behalf of the state. So I didn't know if that was what you meant and that is why I apologised in the advance if I was misinterpreting it.
But yeah, state dictating science. And the U.S. really seems to be headed to that level of catastrophes you described. I need to read more about Lysenkoism. Like I said, I didn't know much about Lysenko other than he was a scientist betraying science for the state propaganda. I don't even know if he believed the nonsense he was spreading. But then again, I don't even know if the ones doing the same now do either. And I have a hard time reading up on people like that. Makes my stomach turn in revolt.
But as a permaculture enthusiastic and someone who has a project with his girlfriend that uses syntropic theory, I'm very curious to read about what kind of nonsense were they applying to farming back then. Do you have any suggestions to read? Like a book or an article? Or should I just put Lysenkoism in a search engine and eventually find the farming part? Would love to know more about this, so if you have some pointers, I would much appreciate to learn more about this.
RFK Jr defintiely does.
yeah i don't have any official recommendations on Lysenkosim reading, but wikipedia's article seems to do a good job. He just had terribly wrong ideas about gene transfer, grafting, etc. all based on Lamarckism, which he believed to be more compatible with communist ideology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism#Lysenko's_claims
I think it is comparing the Soviet's movement spearheaded by a biologist named Trofim Lysenko to the the current lobbying to destroy science's credibility. It was akin to the current lobbying against scientific integrity that started in the U.S. and bled everywhere else. People will immediately think of the hacks that move through the podcasts these days, I'm sure you can think of a few too. It's using a veil of pseudoscience to confuse the layman and advance the purpose of a few under another veil, one of an ideology. Lysenko was very much like the figures of today like that kermit the frog imitation that passes for scientific expert on the "dumbtube". I don't want to name these horrific hacks. They're already taking too much of the bandwidth as it is and for far too long. And I hate that most people that think they're too smart to fall for their crap, fall right into the next trap, which is to go argue and generate more visibility for them. These people never learned the old online code "Do Not Feed The Troll". We spotted them and let them starve. But I compared them more to Gremlins, because they multiply. The grifers spot the grift and chime in for the take.
I hope I didn't misinterpreted the comment you asked about. But Lysenkoism is a great shorthand to describe it all indeed.